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Without reading you can not improve verbal. I m the live [#permalink]
24 Sep 2010, 10:33

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Without reading you can not improve verbal. I m the live example in front of you. I have very less time left ,but I will start reading from today onwards. Do not repeat the mistakes that I have done.Read - read - read. No other solution.

There is no way we can avoid an RC passage. If we are not able to understand any CR/SC question we may skip by guessing, but in RC we can not afford so. We have to answer 3-4 questions. To answer them, we need to comprehend it. Gmat RC's are quite boring, but what has to be done has to be done. Lets be prepared to comprehend while feeling bored !! - its like eating chillies with chocolates

I won't stress much on the Rc strategies; there are so many docs and posts on them. I m here to encourage you all to Read - read - read.

Thanks for the list. Reading comprehension and speed is one of my weakness. Very often, I have to read the CR stimulus more than once to understand what it is trying to say. However, on the test there is just not enough time to read everything twice. So, practice reading different type of materials is definitely important. Currently, I'm reading The Grapes of Wrath, which was one of the novel suggested. After that book, I plan on reading a more difficult material.

I noticed you said you were reading "Grapes of Wrath". I just wanted to caution you on reading long novels - comprehension will usually be about the long story line which has many small stories within it. When it comes to GMAT RC passages, they are similar to articles. If you read articles in magazines like the ones gurpreetsingh pointed out, these are the most effective for your time.

Each article in Washington Post, Scientific American, or The Economist has a certain message to convey - and that message can be conveyed a certain number of ways. The structure of the passage is key to figuring out what the article is about and what that message is. Each article has a direction the author is taking, and it's your job as the reader to figure out what that direction is.

1. Is the author describing an idea and supporting it (ie economic data helps companies, this company benefited in this way, that company benefited in another way)2. Is the author refuting a perspective? (the whole world thinks we are in an economic boom but no, we're actually headed for a recession and here's why)3. Is the author describing a trend? (ie scientists used to use carbon-based technology to date fossils but now there is a newer tool)

The key question, what is the author's direction? Can you connect the dots from paragraph to paragraph to visualize a structure for the passage?

If you read long novels like Grapes of Wrath - it's great for exposing you to new vocabulary and sentence structures. But it's very easy to get lost in all the reading if you haven't strong skills in figuring out what the author's direction is. You also don't give yourself practice for visualizing how the passage is structured since in a book, the passage is just way too long. _________________